“No, I don’t think you could be of use. Go on with your love-making. By the way, I’m going back to-night. When is the train? I’ll just go in and mention it to your mother. I wanted to see what sort of a set you had about. Poor lot!” said Mr. Dirom, shaking his heavy chain as he looked at his watch. “Not a shilling to spare among ’em—and thinking all the world of themselves. So do I? Yes: but then I’ve got something to stand upon. Money, my boy, that’s the only real power.”
Phyllis and Doris met their brother anxiously on his way back. “What is he going to do?” they both said; “what has he been talking to you about? Have you got to give her up, you poor old Fred?”
“I shouldn’t have given her up for a dozen governors; but he’s very good about it. Really to hear him you would think—— He’s perhaps better about it than I deserve. He’s going back to town by the fast train to-night.”
“To-night!” There was both relief and grievance in the tone of the girls.
“He might just as well have gone this morning, and much more comfortable for him,” said Phyllis.
“For us too,” said her sister, and the three stood together and indulged in a little guilty laugh which expressed the relief of their souls. “It is horrid of us, when he’s always so kind: but papa does not really enjoy the country, nor perhaps our society. He is always much happier when he’s in town and within reach of the club.”
“And in the meantime we have got our diamonds.”
“And I my freedom,” said Fred; then he added with a look of compunction, “I say, though, look here. He’s as good to us as he knows how, and we’re not just what you would call——”
“Grateful,” said both the sisters in a breath. Then they began to make excuses, each in her own way.
“We did not bring up ourselves. We ought to have got the sort of education that would have kept us in papa’s sphere. He should have seen to that; but he didn’t, Fred, as you know, and how can we help it? I am always as civil to him as it’s possible to be. If he were ill, or anything happened—By-the-bye, we are always saying now, ‘If anything happened:’ as if there was some trouble in the air.”